State of the Union: Giants Nation and the NFC East

One sentence does not change all the other things you wrote.

Well I come back to see the Giants fans thinking you owned me. Can’t have that!

You like your draft, I don’t. I like our draft, you don’t. There is no way either of us are making any headway on this point. We’ll see how it plays out but I’ve got faith in what I saw.

Martin Parker gone for the Giants. DeAndre Brown gone for the Eagles. There isn’t any room on the roster for UDFAs, they’re all gone after the latest haul of free agents. I think that Herzlich, King and Hynoski potentially making your roster is a negative reflection of the talent on your roster. The Eagles don’t have space for any of them while the Giants might keep a few. Really sort of irrelevant considering none of them will make an impact this year. And I maintain that Herzlich is not going to last long with his lack of athleticism.

You and I have been over the FootballOutsiders metrics before. Are we really going to trust a site that says players like Trent Cole were involved in about 45 run plays in one season? Sure you explained that it measures the success rate in one on one situations with no help but what good is that? What good is a stat that doesn’t measure a DE maintaining containment, standing up a DE, forcing a play wide or funneling the run back inside to the linebackers? And do I really care about how well defensive ends did in coverage? Not really…

I’ll go with this:
Jason Pierre Paul in 304 pass rush snaps: 4 sacks, 4 QB hits, 16 pressures
Brandon Graham in 272 pass rush snaps: 3 sacks, 7 QB hits, 27 pressures

Brandon Graham > JPP

You’ll see what Brandon Graham does when he is healthy and in Jim Washburn’s scheme.

JPP is a bad run defender who doesn’t have any pass rush moves that struggles to redirect and do anything other than bull rush. He plays soft, he isn’t very physical. And he just disappears, he was and still is highly inconsistent. Not to mention he isn’t an explosive athlete. He just a moderately athletic guy that is big and can do some backflips. He is blech. I literally sat there in front of my TV praying the Eagles didn’t take that guy.

Jason Pierre-Paul had 4.5 sacks on the season…
1 against Stephon Heyer, the other came against the Redskins guard on a stunt with Tuck where the blockers followed Tuck and JPP just walked into the backfield and fell on top of McNabb who saw him coming and just dropped to the ground.

The other two were against the Jaguars who were starting Guy Whimper and Jordan Black. On one JPP had zero pressure but Cofield had Garrard by the ankle and after Garrard escaped JPP got the clean up. It took JPP 7 seconds to even get to the QB, 7 seconds, that’s a long time. This sack was luck, not skill. And his second sack he just stuck his arm out and touched Garrard’s arm. I’m not even sure why it was called a sack. If anything that was a FF and nothing else. And keep in mind that he was going against Guy Whimper on both plays here.

The other .5 of a sack came against King Dunlap who touched him (literally, just touched) him but then let him go because he was setting up the screen. JPP wasn’t even blocked.

And I’m not the only one who thinks these things, Football Outsiders agrees with me.

Here’s what happens: Jason Pierre-Paul goes most of the season without producing anything tangible (or intangible). Then he has a really cheap “two sack game” in Week 12. The first sack is the product of a QB being forced by pressure to hold on to the ball and step up right into JPP’s grasp. The second sack comes when he’s well-blocked, but the QB drifts a little too close to the edge of the pocket and JPP is able to stick his hand out and poke the ball away. In both cases it’s good that he was able to make these plays as opposed to not making them, but they were very much about his just waking up in the right spot to collect a sack.
…from that point on, no matter what he actually did on the field the rest of the year (and no matter that he did absolutely nothing on the field before all this), he is officially considered to have had a good (or at least promising) rookie campaign. Any evidence that supports this theory (i.e. the occasional batted ball) gets woven into the narrative, while any evidence that runs contrary to it (i.e. the absence any contribution besides those batted balls, or the fact that he hasn’t beaten a blocker 1-on-1 a single time in the NFL) is discarded.

http://igglesnest.com/2011/state-giants/

The Giants apparently didn’t like what they saw from their offensive line last year. They let their starting C and LG go along with Shawn Andrews who was actually a key reserve for the Giants last year. The Giants offensive line got by on continuity and chemistry, that unit was comfortable working with each other. But, don’t take my word for it, look what their probowl RG Chris Snee said.

"But I’m very close with everyone we have and I really dread the day when someone in that room is gone. If we can steal another season or two together, that would be really special and hopefully we can."

But here’s the best part, their ‘upgrades’ aren’t that good.

William Beatty has played in 7 games in his NFL career where he played more than 50% of the snaps and in those 7 games he has allowed 2 sacks, 11 pressures, 3 QB hits and has committed 4 penalties. As a matter of fact, last season Beatty committed a penalty every 28 plays he was on the field.

David Diehl is moving back to LG after not playing there since 2006. He has been one of the worst tackles in the NFL since moving to LT, allowing 35.5 sacks in the past 4 years. He wasn’t even that good at LG either, according to Stats LLC he allowed 6.5 sacks in his two years at the spot while committing 13 penalties. And according to FootballOutsiders the Giants averaged 4.5 yards per carry and 3.6 yards per carry when running behind the left side of the offensive line in 2005 and 2006. And keep in mind that was 5 years ago, Diehl is now 30 years old and probably isn’t the run blocker he once was, ProFootballFocus has given him a -21.4 grade in run blocking over the past three years.

And their new starting center is David Baas. David Baas has only been a starter for 2 years despite being in the NFL for 6 years and being the 33rd pick in the NFL draft. As a matter of fact, he was playing the center position for the first time last season because he lost his LG spot to 1st round draft pick Mike Iupati. He is a liability in pass protection, he has allowed 7 sacks the past two seasons. He is actually quite clearly a downgrade from a healthy Shaun O’Hara. But he’s big… If that means anything. I personally can’t wait for the Eagles’ defensive tackles to play this guy, especially Cullen Jenkins.

Personally I think the only spot they upgraded was the LT spot but that’s by default considering how terrible Diehl was.

Oh, and guess who their back-up LT is right now? Stacy Andrews. Yeah, that’s going to work out well.

Yeah… That.

And if you need to see what Jim Washburn does, it’s not complicated. He just says ‘beat the guy in front of you’. Catch a replay of the Eagles v.s. Ravens game and you’ll see. 5 sacks, tons of QB hits and more hurries. Tyrod Taylor was running for his life all game. Its what the Eagles will be doing all year. It’s the wide 9 scheme, look it up. I really don’t want to explain it for the billionth time this year.

McCoy is pretty clearly better than Bradshaw. The only category that Ahmad has an edge in is blocking.

And if Bradshaw is such a good 3rd down back why did he have one of the top 10 lowest 3rd down DVOA ratings in the NFL last year? That’s your football bible!

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Higher-Education-Forte-is-worst-among-third-dow?urn=nfl-wp2576

Ahmad Bradshaw(notes), New York Giants — minus-15.3 percent DVOA (22 carries, 61 yards, 55 percent Success Rate)
For all of teammate Brandon Jacobs’(notes) third-down and short-yardage issues in recent years, he actually had a better third-down DVOA than Bradshaw’s (minus-14.4 percent) though he did so on just six carries. Perhaps that’s the biggest indictment of Jacobs; that Bradshaw is put in a situation that doesn’t suit him best. Bradshaw did put up a solid series of third-down performances in 2009 (36.4 percent DVOA and a 54 percent Success Rate), but consistency at that down seems to be a tough order for the G-Men these days.

But his breakout last year was in the 3-4